What’s the Point of Missionary Work?

This sounds like it should be the easiest to answer in this “What is the Point . . . ” series, but on closer examination, there’s reason to wonder whether it is really so straightforward. Obviously, the first answer to this question is that this program is about preaching the gospel to potential converts, right? But, is that really right when so many hours are spent in activities that don’t yield convert baptisms and many serve two years with no baptisms at all? Another purpose of missionary work that is often cited is that the missionaries are the real converts. If the point were convert baptisms, we’d require all women to serve since they are at least anecdotally more effective at getting people to listen to the discussions. Or we’d require everyone to “tithe” by bringing a visitor to Church once a month. Or to tithe in proselyting time like the Jehovah’s Witnesses do. Or we’d do a personality test and only send those who are skilled at this type of work.

Let’s keep this week’s post short and sweet. Here are the contenders for the “point” of missionary work:

Winning new converts / baptizing. Clearly if we were only trying to develop local branches or to create stronger commitment levels among our young people, we could accomplish this in many ways: EFY, Helping Hands projects, short term leadership development callings to these areas, etc. But we are specifically trying to find people unfamiliar with the Church to entice them to join it, to share a gospel message, to help new members bond with their local ward or branch. The success of the program is measured in terms of convert baptisms.

Converting / developing the missionaries. Someone in a previous post observed that if you want to know what a mission is like, just watch Groundhog Day. This speaks to the tedium involved, but this tedium is also developing habits in the missionaries, habits the Church considers productive like a steady sleep schedule, daily scripture study, “weekly companion inventory” discussions that can translate to more open communication in marriage later on, and other beneficial practices, many of which most young people (and older ones) lack. In this way, the mission serves as a Mr. Miyagi, teaching missionaries to wax on, wax off, so that when they neeed to defend against the wicked Kobra Kai Dojo, the defensive habits are so ingrained, they don’t even have to think about them. Additionally, in the process of teaching and attempting to convert others, many missionaries themselves are converted. Some of these are rather miraculous conversions, and others are more the testimony that comes over time, a stronger belief in something that your every day is fully dedicated to furthering. Particularly in missions where baptisms are rare, this is cited as the main reason for missionary service: the development of the missionaries themselves. And truly, we are killing ants with baseball bats if we consider the number of missionaries vs. the number of convert baptisms. There are many more full time missionaries than needed to do just the teaching and baptizing that we do. It’s the tedium, the seemingly fruitless activities, that are the bread and butter of the work.

Correlating / developing local wards and branches. People living in Utah sometimes call every place outside of Utah “the mission field,” implying that it’s under the purview of the missionary program rather than seeing the Church as a global enterprise. In this view, the Church is colonizing these outlying areas, or franchising the Church’s programs and overseeing them to ensure consistency and to avoid local scope creep or customization. In my experience, the more fledgling the branch was, the more callings the missionaries held, teaching the classes, playing and leading the music, finding a church building, and leading the branch. Even in stronger areas, some missionaries were assigned to “oversee” teaching or branch leadership to ensure they were following the program correctly. In business, that’s how franchising works. You’ve sold “the model,” and you want to make sure that the model is being used as designed. In our church especially there’s a strong desire to have uniformity, that the lessons taught follow the manuals, etc. This was definitely one of our mandates as missionaries.

Increasing member commitment (among RMs). Since young men have long been harder to retain than women, making mission service nearly mandatory (a “Priesthood duty”) creates a level of “stickiness” for these young men rather than letting them file out the door at the time when they are most likely to do so. It also shapes their futures in unique ways, exposing them to caring for others in a way they may not have otherwise done. Additionally, the sunk cost of having served a two-year mission adds a hurdle to leaving later in life. Considering two years to have been for naught is a tough pill to swallow, depending on how someone views their missionary service from the distance of time. The sunk cost fallacy is real. The downside to this approach is that not having served a mission has historically created the opposite effect: a near certainty that the young man will leave the Church. But the pressure to serve is so high that perhaps these risks are not serious enough to outweigh the benefits of those who serve.

Strengthening Mormon marriages. When I was in YW, many moons ago, we were told that divorce (which was cited as the scariest and worst thing ever) was much more rare for a temple marriage, but practically unheard of if both the spouses had served missions. If I remember correctly, the statistic that 98% of these marriages avoided divorce was floated at the time. (For the record, I definitely don’t believe that number to be correct now if it ever was). Missionary service was almost always the reason someone attended the temple for the first time unless it was a woman getting married (and then she usually attended the first time on her wedding day or the day before); the link between mission service and future marriage is solidified by the weekly temple attendance required in the MTC. Additionally, mission service has a strong domesticating benefit for men (who have to cook, do their own laundry, shop, etc.) which leads to stronger marriages down the road. Living and working with a companion improves one’s patience, communication skills, and ability to weather the normal storms of personal idiosyncrasy that are inevitable in a marriage. Marriage is seen as the real crowning achievement in the Church, with the endowment and missionary service as a step toward it in the male Mormon “covenant path.”

Your time to vote. What do you believe is the main purpose of missionary work?

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Published by hawkgrrrl

Hawkgrrrl has been blogging since March 2008, publishing hundreds of opinion pieces. She is a wife and mother of three, a business executive, a returned missionary, and is active in her LDS ward. She likes oil painting, reading, theater, and international travel.
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20 thoughts on “What’s the Point of Missionary Work?”

It is an interesting question. I feel that for a long time, at least until the mid 20th century, missionary work was primarily about proselytising and conversion. Then it has changed to a retention program for current members. The problem is that it is not good as either purpose.

The proselytising program is completely outdated. We are using techniques that have not worked for decades and the poor missionaries are over “ruled” they cannot do anything at all.

And to use the mission as a retention tool has been more damaging than good. The number of missionaries going home early, for whatever reason, is a telling trend that the current mission program is not a positive experience.

As you can probably tell I am not a great fan of the current missionary program.

As a retired member of the military I see missionary service as “mormon boot camp “. You are taken away from your normal support systems and molded into the “lean, mean preaching machine” the church wants. So yes, creating future leaders, disciples, toe-the-line compliant members.

I did serve a mission (many years ago). It was not a good experience. Too much focus on statistics and performance. Discussions taught, investigators to church, baptisms, etc.

I thought this was going to go a slightly different direction. A younger, more cynical version of me used to ask the question “What is the point of doing missionary work now when it probably can be done more efficiently in the Spirit World?” I now realize the process of repentance and conversion is much more easily done with a physical body, hence the greater urgency in mortality.

The short answer is bringing people to the Savior, so I’d go with baptizing converts, with conversion and development of the missionary a close second.

I served in what was at the time the first or second lowest baptizing mission in the world, depending on the month. I still had spiritual experiences, a boost in testimony, and an increase in conversion. Although there were a few in my mission who responded bitterly to the low baptisms and took a different path upon coming home, most had an experience similar to mine.

All other reasons listed aren’t bad ones either. I had to learn to be less offended and more patient with a tactless companion( “Elder, if you’re offended by anything I say, you don’t have the Spirit with you.”), help another to make eye contact with people, or simply give another language tips.They all taught me a few things as well, and I ended up loving all of them.

I’m sure there are problems with the missionary program as it’s done now that are definitely in need of improvement, but it’s difficult for me to say the process is broken when I had such a good experience with it. Does the fact that more and more are coming home early say more about the program itself, or the young men and women going into it and the way they were raised? I suppose the Church may have to meet upcoming youth somewhere in the middle, but I think parents can do a better job as well. I can see distinct differences in some of the behaviors of my kids and their friends that I think can be directly linked to the imbalance of screen and family time they have, among other things. I’ve been telling my kids a lot about missionary work, but I don’t shy away from the fact that it is difficult and tedious at times.

I voted for “converting the missionary,” as this rationale has become a mainstay of senior leadership discussions on the benefits of the LDS mission program. Of course bringing in converts will be on that list — it is, after all, a missionary program — but we all know that you could reduce the LDS missionary force by 80% and convert baptisms would decline by maybe 10%. (Recall the experiment done over the last few years where the LDS missionary force went up by something like 50% and converts increased hardly at all. It works the other direction, too.)

Note how the leadership has fiddled with the program the last generation or two, trying to figure out what works better (short answer: nothing). There was the 18 month mission in the early 1980s, the age drop under Pres. Monson, a big push to get more senior couples to serve as missionaries, and the new view that LDS young women are now invited and even encouraged to serve missions. The spike in ERMs (early returning missionaries) is a clear indication there are deep problems with the program, but leadership doesn’t know how to fix it. So they blame the missionaries and blame the parents and blame social media and smart phones and video games.

First and foremost, train a leadership corps for the core areas of Mormonism (mostly in the US). Finding converts to baptize in peripheral areas is of secondary importance. The leaders know that those converts are difficult to retain and more often than not those converts do not have leadership qualities (or money).

My vote would be all of the above but I picked developing the missionary.

Near the end of my mission, I realized how useless I actually was as missionary and how much stronger I was at home as a member. Example: I didn’t have any history with anyone there so that I could be truly build a relationship of trust, I didn’t a have a car to take an investigator to church, and I wasn’t permanent so I couldn’t be the new member’s friend. Everything that really counted was being provided by the members of the ward and that’s where I needed to be in order to truly help.

The missionary program exists for the same reason BYU does. To provide the lay ministers (male and female) to run the church with loyalty to the institutional church. Whether or not that is happening anymore, or ever did to any great extent is an interesting question. In both cases, I think the concept of “sacrifice” has a bonding effect. And I’m not saying that is a particularly bad thing.

Like Andy, all of the above, but I voted for Increasing long-term member commitment and retention among the returned missionaries.

One DL told me (in jest) the main reason to serve a mission was that it would result in getting a more attractive spouse.

Scriptural mandate should also maybe be an option. Go-ye-into-all-the-world and all that.

It feels to me like the missionary program is painted into a corner. We have to send out missionaries because scriptures and tradition demand it. Many of the remote branches would suffer without missionaries. Can’t pay them (except for mission presidents) because we need a lay clergy. Can’t raise the age because that would reduce the force in the short term and seem like back tracking to boot. Also we don’t want to wait until the young men have careers and families to worry about. Can’t tell men missionary work is optional because of all those that went when every worthy man should serve a mission.

Another way of looking at it is optimization. There missionary program seems to be optimized to produce the maximum number of missionaries rather than the maximum number of converts. Why else would we be sending 18-20 year olds out to teach middle aged parents and their kids about eternal families? The only reason I can think of is because at that age, you can get the most missionaries out at the lowest cost.

I think the purpose of the missionary program varies geographically. Where I live, I feel the focus is more on the missionaries themselves, because leadership is desperately trying to find something meaningful for them to do. In places where my kids have served, the impression I get is it’s been a little different. In one place, it sounded like the missionaries were an invaluable stabilizing influence on the members in the area with a few converts thrown in, and in a couple others, it sounds like the missionary work has been very useful in finding new converts, some of whom sound like they’re really converted (and for whom subsequent missionaries are a stabilizing influence). Obviously, the missionary program serves a lot of purposes simultaneously, but just because it doesn’t seem effective in San Francisco, CA, doesn’t mean that it isn’t effective in San Francisco, Dominican Republic. The other thing people have to realize is that there are a lot of missionaries called from foreign countries who develop dramatically on their missions and come home with skills and attitudes that will help lift them out of poverty. I don’t think it’s accurate to think the program has to have one main priority.

I had a strong desire to serve a mission to find, teach and baptize, and did so in the mid 1980’s, in one of the lowest baptizing missions at the time. My days were spent knocking on doors and getting those doors slammed in my face. I ended up meeting and serving with my future husband. So I always tell people that I served a mission, not to convert people, but to find my husband. Having said that, it was a conversion experience for me, and I believe that it benefited my husband immensely. I also believe that a mission was the best thing to happen to my two sons. However, through the years I always told girls that they should only serve a mission for the express reason of wanting to share the gospel, no other, because missions are hard, and missions are a man’s world. Maybe it’s different today, but in the 1980’s it was a man’s world and, as a sister missionary, you had to prove yourself worthy to be out there. The elders, who didn’t always work hard, or obey the rules all the time, were not very forgiving of sisters who were not 100% all the time. My older daughter didn’t have a desire to serve, and I was fine with that. But if my younger daughter wishes to serve, I will support her 100%. I still believe it’s a great program for the youth.

In a nutshell: I think that the purpose is to give individuals an opportunity to learn and study more about the gospel of Jesus Christ, to communicate with God about it, and, if they choose to, to work with Him to change and become better, wiser and more like Christ in thought, word and action..

At times that individual is the missionary. At other times it is someone he or she contacts, or his or her companion. Or it is a local member, church leader or mission president. Occasionally it is someone the missionary has left at home. It may be someone a missionary teaches. And sometimes it is someone any one of those individuals in that list may interact with years later.

IMHO, some of the above people already understand that purpose before they begin. Some come to understand it, or begin to understand it, during a missionary’s service. And some understand it later and regret that they didn’’t do so earlier.

I vote for convincing the missionary that s/he’s sunk so much time and effort into it that leaving the church would mean you’d wasted the mission time completely. Humans have a strong need to have our efforts mean something. If we can keep them active and invested during the first few years after the mission, get them married, etc., we have a much better chance of keeping them for the long-term.

Of course, it is almost completely a waste of time from the individual’s viewpoint.

Missionaries came to me 49 years ago when I was 18 and I joined the church. Now I view it that they interfered in my personal life and knocked it off course forever. Missionaries should leave people alone, and wait for interested people to contact them for information about the church.

My sons won’t serve missions. My oldest would have been an awesome missionary but life happened, in large part the church’s fault, (completely the church’s loss). My son is attending college in the fall. Odds of him going completely inactive: 98%

I am heartened by the possibilities that service missions present. I recently attended a missionary farewell for a young man going on a traditional mission to California. At the party I ended up chatting with Ziff’s son for a little while. He recently completed a one year service mission, serving at our region’s bishop’s storehouse and at a local food pantry. He lived and home and had a great experience. He is planning on attending the local student ward when he goes to college in the fall.

I contrast these three young men: Ziff’s son, the future California missionary, and my son. Compared to the other two extremes, the service mission reduces costs, provides meaningful change in the community, can be a positive in the “missionary’s” life, and (based on my non statistical sample of one) did not negatively affect testimony. The church should look for ways to expand this program.

MTodd: “I am heartened by the possibilities that service missions present” My nephew was offered to do a service mission as a young adult, and he really wanted to serve, but the problem was he couldn’t live at home (his mom had moved out of state), and he couldn’t afford to pay rent without having a paying job. He had expected to serve a mission where he would have a companion and live in the mission, not live at home and commute to an assignment. Service missions shouldn’t be treated so differently from regular missions and all missions should involve a lot more service, IMO. The requirement to live at home during a service mission is fine if the person going needs to live at home for some reason, but it’s not always possible. That feels like a gap. It’s the only reason my nephew did not serve a mission despite his great desire to do so.

I’m a little late on this, as the fast moving world of WaT will soon have no one reading here in another day. But I did want to comment.
I often think about this question, especially as I served in small fishing villages and outports of Canada in the 70’s, and saw nary a baptism. I knocked doors for 10 hrs/day, summer and winter, and was of the opinion (until the last few years) that I was one of those “seed sowers”, creating a foundation for future missionaries and members to build on. It was a very real “convert the missionary” mission for me. There were about 50% of us that came home without any “fruit”, yet I learned much, grew in my knowledge and had a lot of fun. For me, I had a chance to kind of grow up, learn responsibility and take time to ponder my life and future.
It would be hard to say that it was a waste of time, as one can never answer that question of “what would be different in my life had I not gone?” So all in all, it was a positive for me, and from where I sit today, I’m glad that I did not bring anyone else into this church.
As to my thoughts today, if I had 60,000 young, eager, optimistic young people willing to give so much, I wouldn’t waste their time by engaging in 1950’s door-to-door selling approaches or hanging out in crowded places annoying people engaged with their own lives. Instead, I would capture their souls by giving them something truly meaningful to do. People love to be engaged in some worthy cause, and if I could have all these young people doing real work that they and others could see was actually improving the world, they would be a pretty much unstoppable force for good. Imagine a mission dedicated to the building/repair of schools around the world, or putting in sanitary water and/or waste systems. Perhaps they could work with local health organizations and even help arrange for some of that money that goes to building malls and fantastic Utah chapels to be used locally for true, real humanitarian work. There are an unlimited number of great things that they could do, just use your imagination. No yellow T-shirts, name tags or white shirts/ties. Just strong youth doing what the Lord himself truly would do. That would be an amazing force for good in the world.
That would change the world, and i think that people from everywhere would want to be associated with these wholesome, happy people, and the rolls of the church would (I believe) invariable grow.
That’s what I think the church could do. If I was given a hammer and a T-shirt and Levis and given the chance to fix up people’s physical lives (as well as getting a chance to teach them why I did what I did), I think I would have even come back a better person.
(This $0.02 of mine is worth exactly what you paid for it)

Bryant: I wish I could like your comment more than once. In my case, while I did baptize quite a bit, what sticks with me are the people I helped kick addiction, be better parents, get out of abusive marriages, or improve their situation financially. That’s what made my mission worthwhile.

The missionary program in the 1960’s didn’t work in Western Europe. Missionaries largely wasted their time. If this was leadership training, it wasn’t very good. And there were few baptism.

Angela hinted at a possible improved goal for missionaries: Service. This might also improve our image; make us look less like a cult. And it just might improve proselyting efforts (and our image). It would also be a life changer for the missionaries.

Dark Traveler, boot camp only lasts for a few weeks. My mission lasted 2-1/2 years. The MTC is the boot camp.